Perhaps having a little escapism isn’t a bad thing, even in a time of crisis. Looking on Facebook especially over the last few days I’ve seen a lot of friends going through hardships right now with the fires in Southern California. I know the news isn’t good in many cases in terms of property loss. Our hearts go out to the folks affected.
Since sometimes less is better, I’m keeping the post simple tonight, and sharing a cartoon you particular folks probably know pretty well: Parrotville Post Office, a Cinecolor Van Beuren Cartoon from 1935, directed by Tom Palmer (with Burt Gillett taking the main credit).
The three Parrotville shorts made by Van Beuren were films I didn’t grow up with at all, but as I met a lot of cartoon folks — fans, animators, film collectors— I found that many of the generation just slightly older than me saw these film multiple times on TV as kids. The first of the series I saw was this one, in a pretty beat up black and white print I got along with a lot of other pretty beat up black and white cartoons. Official Films made a lot of prints of these particular shorts in black and white, and Commonwealth had made Cinecolor prints in the 40s into the 50s.
Of the series, Parrotville Old Folks is my own favorite, but I like a lot of things about this short as well. I think it has one of the best soundtracks of any of the series, well-timed to the animation and with enjoyable little themes throughout, just a great track. The character design on the bad guy is one of my favorites in any of the Rainbow Parades, and the animation (some by Bill Littlejohn) is beautiful and fill of great poses. It’s also nice to hear the track in a little better quality, from this 35mm Cinecolor print.
So, in the spirit of keeping things simple and having a little cartoon break, here’s Parrotville Post Office. We cleaned this one up a handful of years back for the Rainbow Parades volume 1 blu-ray set.
Wishing the best to everyone this week, and see you here next week too!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
First of all, here’s hoping that everybody near to the Los Angeles areas that are vulnerable to the wildfires are safe! Now, regarding the cartoon, I do remember these cartoons from when I was a kid watching TV every early morning on our ABC affiliate. I think some of these cartoons were mixed in with my favorite MGM cartoons, but when The MGM cartoons were not picked up, these took their place. This is a great memory.
The Parrotville cartoons may be as dull as children’s scissors, but there’s still much to like about them. I find myself captivated by the office furnishings of a bygone era: the ink pads and rubber stamps, the postal scale with its graduated weights, and so on. There are even a couple of spittoons in the background! Forty years ago I had a temp job in a big corporate mailroom, a comparatively modern place with electronic scales and postage meters. There weren’t any spittoons on the floor, but most of the desks still had ashtrays on them. I remember everybody gathering around to see a demonstration of a brand new invention called a fax machine. Lord, I’m getting old.
I also noticed a lot of letters lying around on the post office floor. Somebody ought to tell the Captain to “Pick ’em up!”
My city luckily hasn’t been affected by the fires – at least not yet. Some of my friends’ family members’ houses had burnt to a crisp. Seeing the aftermaths of places such as Malibu and Altadena was truly devastating. Even then, skies over here are turning orange and streets are filled with leaves and ashes with the smell of smoke. Here’s hoping that both me and everyone else in Southern California stays safe in these uncertain times. And only a few days into the new year too.
About Parrotville Post Office, it’s probably my favorite entry in the ill-fated Parrotville shorts, which isn’t saying much. I also dig the soundtrack that Winston Sharples scores the film with, so much so that back in March last year, I posted a reconstructed version of the music track (a part of me wants to modify it, but for now I’ll keep my upload as-is): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqsB4edWo2U
Another thing to say about the soundtrack is that there is a brief audible oddity at the 3:50 mark. There is an audible splice within the music as the shotgun fires into the ceiling. The music-only clips of the cartoon featured in music libraries have this piece intact. My guess is that they re-recorded the sound effect which would require them to splice it into the music track.
I love the scans Thunderbean is able to get from these Cinecolor shorts. (Even more pristine are the ones on the Willie the Whopper disc.) The Red-Orange and Blue-Green dyes that Cinecolor used produced a much richer spectrum than the red and green of two-color Technicolor (which IMHO, seemed to yield a far more limited color range and tended toward a desaturated sepia look.) Cinecolor, at least in these wonderful scans by Thunderbean, shows brighter, more saturated colors. I love the brilliant blues and reds but there are even some greens (mostly grey-green and olive) and sort-of yellows (mostly ocher and pale orange) appear. Too bad about the built-in misalignment here and there, but that’s probably a job for AI. Bring on Volume 2 (though many of those I assume will be from genuine three-color Technicolor.)